


What did you think of the many parts of me?

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, I'm Bad At Tagging, Multiple Personalities, Out of Body Experiences, Team as Family, The Underground (Doom Patrol TV), cliff and jane talk about the underground and all the personalities cliff met, thats literally it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 11:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18520900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: It’s one whole week before Cliff sees Jane after the incident. Before everything happened with Penny and Black Annis and Daddy in the Underground. He feels like maybe she deserves a little time for herself.But on the eighth day of no contact between either of them, Cliff leaves his room and comes to a stop at Jane’s closed door and he looks at the hardwood for a good few minutes before he knocks.





	What did you think of the many parts of me?

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if there were more personalities that Cliff met, I haven't seen any eps yet so I only know what I saw on youtube.

It’s one whole week before Cliff sees Jane after the incident. Before everything happened with Penny and Black Annis and Daddy in the Underground. He hears her, sure, he can always hear Jane no matter what room in the house she’s in, but he just doesn’t see her for a very long time.

Cliff doesn’t think that she’s avoiding him necessarily. More like… keeping her distance. And if space is what she needs, Cliff is more than happy to let her have that, especially being in her head like he was. He feels like maybe she deserves a little time for herself.

But on the eighth day of no contact between either of them, Cliff leaves his room and walks down the winding halls until he comes to a stop at Jane’s closed door and he looks at the hardwood for a good few minutes before he knocks. “Jane? It’s me. Cliff. I uh, I’d like to come in but if you don’t want to see me or talk to me yet I can come back another time.” God, he sounds awkward to his own ears. He waits for a reply that he’s sure he won’t receive but then the lock is clicking and the handle is turning and he can see half of Jane’s face and her wild shock of hair in the crack of the door.

“You can come in,” She says quietly and pulls the door open a little bit more before she turns and walks back into the darkness of the room.

When he pushes open the door the rest of the way and tentatively enters the room, Jane is sitting on the edge of her bed with her head down, turning something over and over in her hands. Cliff can see the ruined mess of Karen’s wedding gown discarded in a pile on the floor. Jane’s hair obscures her face and she doesn’t look up at Cliff, not even when he walks over to her and slowly sits down beside her on the bed, mindful of his weight and his bulk and the creaking of the bedsprings. “Hi,” he says lamely.

“Hi,” she replies, still not looking at him.

Cliff feels the need to clear his throat, even though he doesn’t really need to anymore, so he does. It sounded like the revving of a chainsaw inside a metal tube. He cringed, mentally. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want me there, in your head, but if we had any other options I wouldn’t have done it. You weren’t waking up and we were all really worried so I just thought it would be better if I went in to talk to you in person. I know you didn’t want me there, and I’m really sorry I didn’t listen to you when you told me to leave.”

Jane is silent for a few moments too long before she tilts her head and looks up at Cliff, her hair falling over her shoulder and revealing her face. “I get it. You were trying to help. But maybe don’t go poking around in my head without my permission, alright?”

“If by ‘you’ you mean Jane and not Penny or Baby Doll or any of the others because _they_ technically let me-” Jane gives him a look and Cliff realises he’s rambling. “Alright. It’s a deal.”

Relaxing, Jane settles back on the bed, shoulders forward before she tosses the object in her hands across the room. As it sails past, Cliff belatedly realizes that it’s a puzzle piece, but he can’t think about that for too long because then Jane is settling her whole weight against him, feet flat on the bed. “What did you think?”

“About what?”

“The other’s,” Jane asks it in such a way to make it sound like she doesn’t care but Cliff knows that if she doesn’t care then she wouldn’t even have asked in the first place. “What did you think about them?”

His sigh sounds like the blades of a rotating fan with a piece of plastic stuck inside it but Cliff shifts slightly, careful not to disturb Jane, so he can look down at her as he thinks. “There was a few I didn’t mind. Karen was a little nuts but she didn’t do anything to hurt me. She wanted me to find you.” If Cliff was able to scrunch up his face he would have. “She thought I was in love with you.”

“Are you?” Jane doesn’t sound like she cares all that much.

Cliff shakes his head. “No. I care about you, but not like that.” Jane hums and waves her hand to tell him to continue, so he does. “Jack Straw helped me get out of the prison cells but we didn’t exactly have any interaction. Penny was nice- a little scared and a tiny bit skittish, but she helped me find you.”

“Penny is our flight-or flight,” Jane says, a little disdain in her voice. “She's almost always flighting though. She runs away when she doesn’t think she can handle it and will do whatever it takes to make sure we survive.”

Nodding, Cliff shifts again, though he doesn’t really know why. Jane seems comfortable against him and he can’t be uncomfortable anymore, so he should stop moving. He doesn’t want to jostle Jane. “I tore my skin off for Black Annis,” he says and it’s still something that hurts, dimly, like remembering it through someone else’s experiences, but the realization that he is no longer a man is one that he should have come to a very long time ago. “And then she grabbed my junk before she let me through. It seems like all your… people have a tendency to grab my junk to make a point.”

Jane laughs and Cliff looks down at her because it’s the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard. “Yeah, they get that way sometimes. It’s they’re way to of getting their point across.”

“I don’t know what I did to get on everyone’s bad side,” Cliff grumbles good-naturedly and Jane snorts. “Everyone hated me there. I wasn’t even sure that Driver 8 would let me off the train and when she did I wish she didn’t because I was suddenly thrown into a fucking cell with a scarecrow and Karen.” He shivers involuntarily. “I didn’t mind her though. She was nice, for a while. She tried to help me find you.”

“Being stuck anywhere with Karen is hell,” Jane agrees. “What about Silver Tounge?”

“I don’t think I met her.”

“Lucy Fugue?”

“Nope.”

“Pretty Polly?”

“Not her either.”

Jane sighs. “Then who the fuck did you meet?”

There is a moment of silence in which Cliff thinks for a moment and Jane waits impatiently but eventually, Cliff manages to come up with one of the many names he has tried to commit to memory. “Driller Bill punched me really fucking hard. I thought she was going to break my ribs.”

“That’s sort of what she does.” Jane gives him a non-committal shrug. “Who else?”

Cliff thinks that he would be biting his lips if he had any. He feels like he’s about to enter into unwelcome territory. “I met Miranda in a memory,” he says and Jane flinches. “And then Penny took me through her station to get to you. Lots of dead bodies in there. Pretty fucking creepy.”

“Penny should have told you not to look,” Jane says as she brings her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “She knew what you would find in there.”

“Oh, she did,” Cliff says and Jane snorts out a laugh. “But when have I ever listened to a word anyone said to help me?”

Jane leans her head back and rests it against Cliff’s shoulder. “I can’t argue with that lack of logic. Anyone else?”

Everything within him was telling him not to say it, but he never was good at following his instincts. “I don’t think we’re counting Daddy as a personality, are we? Because I didn’t technically meet him. No, he picked me up and tore my legs off with his teeth before I could introduce myself, so I don’t think he counts.”

Cliff’s jokes normally get some sort of reaction out of Jane, but for some reason, this one is answered with nothing but silence. “Yeah, let’s not talk about Daddy, alright?” Jane’s voice is stony and Cliff feels the need to obey. “Especially not in front of the others. If you tell them anything, I’ll rip your fucking head off of your shoulders, got it?”

“Got it,” Cliff holds his hands up in mock surrender. “It’s not my story to tell. It’s yours. And if you don’t want to tell it yet, that’s fine by me, but I’ll be there when you decide to change your mind.”

There is a small, breathy sound from Jane that might be a laugh but Cliff can’t see her to be sure. He suspects she might be smiling. “Hold on a second,” Jane finally sits up and turns to face Cliff with a look of confusion, her lips twisted into something sharp and her eyes narrowed. “Hammerhead’s the jailer, she normally runs that whole fucking deal. If you were thrown into the cells with Karen and Jack Straw, why didn’t you run into Hammerhead?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I did,” Cliff reassures. “And let me tell you- she’s even more of a bitch in person than she is on her most pissy days.”

Jane laughs then, loud and long and filled with snorts, and Cliff is more than proud to join in with her.

After a while, Jane falls asleep against his side and he carefully moves her into bed with his hands that do nothing but hurt and tucks her in, and she doesn’t stir. When he exits the room and quietly shuts the door behind him, he is met by the surprising form of Larry with his arms crossed against his bandaged chest, leaning up against the wall. “You made Jane laugh,” He says without preamble. “Nobody ever makes Jane laugh.”

“Oh, so you’re eavesdropping now?” Cliff asks gruffly, waving at the door. “That’s just fucking great. Because we really need that kind of stuff around here.”

But Larry is already shaking his head before Cliff is done speaking. “I didn’t hear anything. John- the negative spirit did, and it told me in a dream. Said I should come and check it out. I only just got here 10 seconds before you opened that door.”

“So what?” Cliff lifts and drops his hands to his sides. “I’m not allowed to be funny?”

Sighing a sigh of pure pain and exasperation, Larry passes him silently and pats him on the shoulder. “Good job, tin can.”

Cliff is left alone there in the hallway outside Janes door and wonders (hopes) that maybe everything is going to be alright after all.


End file.
